Terminator Penguins: A Bionic Skynet for the Animal Kingdom (VIDEO)

You can almost feel the forces of future evolution at work as you watch this eerie video of bionic penguins created by the German futuristic engineering think tank, Festo. You get the eerie sense that you're watching a 21st Century Doctor Who sequel: their new Bionic Learning Network's autonomous creatures look like an early step down the road leading to decentralized, autonomous, self-controlling and self-organizing systems that just might take over Planet Earth in a few hundred years.

Those sleek Terminator penguins you see swimming around the tank are  “autonomous underwater vehicles” — look, act, and move like real penguins, with  dolphin-like sonar capabilities and the ability to swim backwards, which a flesh and blood penguin can't do, and can navigate and interact with other robopenguins.

Festo designers also created blimp robot, in true Festo fashion, shaped like a penguin, which we all at their current stage of evolution know can fly. There's also a spooky reactive wall that responds to movement and sound.

The “Bionic Learning Network” uses nature as a role model to design and create optimally adapted motion sequences – created by evolution over millennia and inspired by the latest technology  along the road to decentralized, autonomous, self-controlling and self-organizing systems.

http://www.festo.com/cms/en-us_us/4981.htm
http://gizmodo.com/5218481/who-needs-nature-festo-bionic-learning-network-builds-a-better-penguin